Dave Johnson, Speak Out California

One more attempt to get a state budget in place collapsed — blocked by the Republicans because it included tax increases.  Republicans insist that the budget be balanced with billions and billions of dollars in cuts in our schools and fire protection and the other things most of us want our state to do.

I would bet that most of California’s public doesn’t know what is going on with our budget.  They only know that there isn’t one, and that this is causing problems.  It makes people angry, and causes them to lose faith in government.  

People know that government employees are being forced to take pay cuts, and many are being laid off.  But they really do not know why.

Yesterday’s budget vote was 45-30.  The public doesn’t understand that this means that there were forty-five votes FOR the budget and only thirty votes against, and this is why it failed.  They don’t understand that because it does not make sense.  But because of a trick that the Republicans were able to play on the public the rules are that it takes a two-thirds vote to pass a budget.  So an overwhelming vote of 45-30 FOR the budget means that the budget does NOT pass!

Every Republican in the state has taken a vow not to raise taxes on wealthy corporations or massively wealthy individuals.  They won’t vote to require people who buy yachts or private jets to pay the same sales taxes that the rest of us pay when we buy cars.  They refuse to ask oil companies to pay fees when they take our oil out of the ground and sell it to us.  (Maybe they understand that such a vote will dry up their campaign funding…)

News stories about the latest budget collapse:  

San Jose News:

Although the $105.2 billion budget blueprint garnered a majority vote, 45-30, it fell short of the two-thirds supermajority that California’s constitution requires to pass a budget.

. . . The vote “shows clearly that we’re not going to vote for taxes,” said Assembly Republican leader Mike Villines, R-Fresno.

Wall Street Journal:

“We’re fundamentally saying ‘no tax increases,'” said Mike Villines, the Assembly Republican leader.

They will require workers to take pay cuts and layoffs.  They will cut our school budgets.  They will cut transportation, the DMV, road repair, law enforcement, prisons, fire protection.  But they will not ask wealthy corporations or extremely wealthy individuals to pitch in.

And here is why:  by and large California’s public doesn’t know this.  They are not being informed that this is entirely because a small minority of Republicans refuse to represent the public’s interests, choosing to represent the wealthy corporations and wealthiest few people.  

In fact, the public likely believes that it is the Democrats who are keeping the budget from being passed.  If you Google the word Democrat with the word obstruction and you get about 600,000 results.  This is a national result, but it reflects the same strategy in use in California.  Republicans spent years accusing Democrats of being “obstructionist” when they were not, as a strategy to pressure them to pass Republican-/corporate-oriented bills.  Now, after blocking almost everything that the nation’s Congress is doing, the Republicans are campaigning saying that the Democrats in Congress aren’t passing anything!  Meanwhile a new Drum Major Institute polls shows that 72% of middle-class Americans can’t name a single bill passed by Congress in the last two years that benefited them or their families!  (Minimum wage increase, stimulus package, college more affordable, SCHIP…)

Less than two in five (38%) middle-class respondents to the Drum Major Institute’s new poll say they live comfortably.  One-third (34%) say they meet their basic expenses each month with just a little left over for extras, while one-quarter (26%) of middle-class adults would say they just meet their basic expenses (17%) or have trouble meeting their basic expenses each month (9%). And, economy and jobs tops their concerns. They are pessimistic about the direction of the economy. They think it’s more likely that Brangelina will celebrate their 25th anniversary than gas prices returning to $3 a gallon.

But they do not understand WHY.  They don’t make the connection between the corporate-controlled Republican party and what is happening to the country.

How do Republicans get away with this?  How are they able to get the public to think so many things that are not true?  The Republicans have a vast “noise machine” that tells the public things that are not true.  (Remember how they were able to convince so many people that Iraq had attacked us on 9/11?)  It costs a lot of money to have a noise machine like this, but they get the money from the very corporations and wealthy individuals whose interests they are representing.  So it works for them.

Plain and simple, they are bale to reach the public and tell them stuff, and get the public to believe it.  The use of overwhelming repetition is the tactic.  I use the word “stuff” here with meaning: it’s just stuff they want the public to believe, with no grounding in reality.  They do it, and here we are.  Nationally the debt is approaching TEN TRILLION DOLLARS and they are still able to get the public to think taxes are bad.  In California they are able to force layoffs and school cuts while refusing to make the ultra-rich pay even the same taxes the rest of us pay.

Please click through to Speak Out California an leave a comment with suggestions on how to fight this.

[UPDATE] Almost as soon as I posted this Arnold announced the fundraiser will be rescheduled to Sept. 19. Doesn’t change the basic issue though.

Not content with firing 20,000 state workers and jeopardizing the wages of thousands more, and apparently unconcerned that the lack of a state budget might further harm California’s already reeling economy, Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to Portland on Thursday to raise money for Republican US Senator Gordon Smith.

The fundraiser is a slap in the face to Californians, and not just because Arnold is abandoning the budget stalemate. Gordon Smith played a central role in the salmon crisis that has crippled the California fishing industry and imperiled the jobs of thousands.

In 2002 Smith conspired with Karl Rove and Dick Cheney to divert water from the Klamath River to farmers in southern Oregon experiencing dry conditions, in order to shore up Smith’s rural base. Cheney convened a “God squad” that overrode endangered species protections in order to make the water diversion for nakedly political purposes – still one of the boldest and most destructive anti-environment moves of the entire Bush era.

The result was an ongoing catastrophe for the Pacific Coast salmon fishery. The diversion caused a massive die-off of salmon in the Klamath River in 2002, but the effects have been long-lasting. Salmon numbers have been so slow to recover that salmon fishing was severely restricted in 2007. Here in 2008, of course, the ENTIRE west coast salmon fishery has been closed, an unprecedented event. While the issues in the Sacramento Delta were a primary motivator behind the total closure, the ongoing weakness of the Klamath fishery, dating to the 2002 fish kill, is a contributing factor.

Gordon Smith is unrepentant  about his role in the fish kill:

Sen. Gordon Smith said Tuesday that he has no regrets about the diversion of water from the Klamath River that was intended to protect fish but instead went to farmers….

“I am not here to make any apologies,” said Smith, who faces re-election next year. “I am proud to fight for the farmers or any group of Americans whom the federal government says has no standing, no water. I just find that offensive.”…

I am not sorry for fighting for farmers. I have a responsibility for humankind.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has his own responsibility – to Californians and their jobs. To Californians who have been devastated by the salmon crisis, from Yurok and Hoopa peoples living along the Klamath whose traditional rights have been eroded, to the fishermen in towns like Fort Bragg and Monterey whose livelihoods have been put at risk so Gordon Smith could score points with a few farmers in southern Oregon.

Arnold’s attendance at the fundraiser is a slap at his fellow Californians. And while it’s not likely that we can convince him to cancel the event, we can fight back by donating to Jeff Merkley, the progressive Democrat running against Smith. Merkley has said that he will help save the salmon by preferencing science, not crass politics. It’s a better position for us Californians than the fish and job killing of Gordon Smith that our own governor is now helping enable.

The story of Sacramento lobbyists killing two bills to eliminate PFC chemicals from packaging is short, so you can go read it yourself.  It’s the same old story – legislation that is overwhelmingly popular and easily implementable is killed off by lobbyists for business and industry.  Regardless of the budget fight, that’s life in Sacramento.  And at the same time, legislators scurry to one fundraiser after another where the same lobbyists pat them on the head and hand them a check.  It’s nauseating, and anyone outside of a political consultant who thinks that the next governor race matters even a whit absent fundamental change of this aspect of Sacramento politics is dreaming.

And people power is the only thing that’ll kill it dead, not a kinder and gentler version of the same old politics that can’t change the state.

UPDATE by Brian: I’ve added the vote information for both bills in the comments.